


a foregone conclusion

by Atlanta_Black



Series: The Mystery of the Potter Family [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Adopted Children, Domestic Fluff, Family Fluff, First War with Voldemort, Fix-It of Sorts, Fluff, Found Family, Gen, Implied Time Travel, Marauders Era (Harry Potter), Marauders Friendship (Harry Potter), Parent-Child Relationship, Remus Lupin is a Little Shit, Sirius Black is a Little Shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:28:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27195815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Atlanta_Black/pseuds/Atlanta_Black
Summary: Four of the six inhabitants of Potter Manor are awoken one night, an intruder crossing the ward line. The intruder turns out to be a small, gray-eyed child who watches them all with wary eyes and refuses to speak.To no one's surprise, it takes less than a day for James and Lily to decide to adopt the presumably abandoned child.
Relationships: James Potter/Lily Evans Potter
Series: The Mystery of the Potter Family [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1985303
Comments: 15
Kudos: 138





	a foregone conclusion

Potter manor lies in a valley, in a stretch of countryside that will stay unnamed due to the inability of folks to remember the name of the town that it resides near. Although, near is relative since many residents of the unnamed town are completely unaware that there is a manor within two hours walking distance. Those that are aware don’t talk about it due to not being able to remember why they know such a thing. 

The town and its inhabitants are not at all important though. What’s important, is that Potter manor lies in a valley, surrounded by miles and miles of countryside, only one small town within any half-way reasonable walking distance at all. This suits the inhabitants of Potter manor very well considering the type of people that they are. 

Potter manor is home to six striking individuals, although only four of them are actual Potter’s. 

Fleamont and Euphemia Potter are the former heads of the manor. Fleamont keeps up with the family business, although this takes up very little of his time. The rest of his time is spent pursuing various hobbies with his lovely wife who takes great delight in finding new hobbies every few months for them to pursue. 

James and Lily Potter are the current heads of the manor, despite their insistence that surely they were not yet old enough for such responsibility. James Potter is the only child and heir of Fleamont and Euphemia and takes to running the sprawling household with far more ease than he expected and just as much ease as his parents anticipated. Lily Potter ‘nee Evans is the school sweetheart of James Potter and when she is not learning what all goes into running a rather large and old pureblood manor, she is pursuing her charms mastery next to one Sirius Black. 

The other two individuals, Sirius Black, and Remus Lupin will be described in time as James Potter feels it is necessary.   


➳

  
The story starts on a chilly October night when James Potter is jerked awake by the wards on the east side of the property wailing in his head. The wards shrilly inform him that only one person has crossed the ward line but given the current state of the wizarding world, that is one too many. 

“Lil’s,” he hisses, shaking his wife’s shoulder. “Lil’s, wake up.”

“What,” she groans, shoving his hand off and trying to roll away. “Fuck off, Potter.”

“Someone just crossed the ward line,” he hisses, shaking her shoulder harder. “I’m going to check on it. Wake up, unless you want me to go alone!”

“UGH, fine, fine, I’m getting up,” she grumbles, shoving his hand away again, before sitting up and blinking blearily around the room. 

They stop and wake up Sirius and Remus as well, there’s no telling who the intruder is and he’d rather be safe than sorry. He’s confident that all four of them can take whoever is out there, regardless of who it is. 

Sirius and Remus are just as bleary-eyed as Lily, none of them having the shrieking wards echoing in the back of their heads. He’ll have to get Lily keyed into the wards soon, if for no reason other than he finds it extremely unfair to be the only one rudely awoken by screeching. Maybe he’ll have Sirius keyed into them as well. Bastard deserves it for sending a stinging hex at him when he woke him up. 

The night air is biting against his skin as they step outside, the bottom of his pajamas immediately growing damp from the wet grass. It smells as if it’s only just stopped raining recently and he can’t help but wonder who the hell would bother trying to break in without even attempting to not trigger the wards. 

He follows the shrieking noise and the life point that’s moved a few yards inside the wards, wand held carefully in front of him, Lily, Sirius, and Remus comforting presences at his back. 

For a moment, when they reach the spot that the life point is coming from, he stands blinking into the dark, wondering if the wards have just gone haywire. He doesn’t see anyone at all but the life point is still shining bright. He doesn’t see anyone at all until Sirius sucks in a sharp breath and angles the light from his wand downwards and James feels his mouth drop open. 

There in front of them is a young boy staring up at them with wide, feverish gray eyes. He has his arms wrapped around himself and is only wearing what looks like a horrifyingly thin pair of pajamas, his shivering obvious. 

“Shit,” moony whispers, shoving his wand into James’ hand and shrugging off his cardigan, carefully approaching the kid. “Hey there,” he says gently, crouching down and freezing in place when the kid flinches back. “Hey, hey, don’t worry, we’re not going to hurt you. Why don’t you take this? You look like you could use it.” He holds the cardigan out slowly as the kid stares at them all warily, eyes far too bright even in the dim light of their wands. After a tense moment, the kid reaches out and takes the cardigan from Remus, backing up a few steps and slipping it on, nearly drowning in the fabric. 

“Do you want to come back to the house with us?” Lily asks gently, crouching down as well to meet the kid’s eyes. “We have hot cocoa and a lot of blankets.” 

The kid nods slowly after a moment, shying away from all of them but following them slowly when they hesitantly start back towards the house. He exchanges a wide-eyed, horrified glance with Sirius who shrugs in response. What kind of bastards left a kid outside by themselves like this? Especially one so young! 

It comes as a surprise to no one at all when halfway back to the house, the kid topples over in a dead faint, clearly sick and exhausted. Lily catches him before he can hit the ground and hisses when she presses a hand to his face. 

“He’s burning up,” she mutters, picking him up and setting off for the house at a near jog. 

“I’ll go to Mungo’s and get a healer,” Sirius volunteers, pressing a worried hand to the back of the kid’s forehead when he passes. “Bloody fucking hell,” he swears, taking off at a run, presumably to reach the floo. 

“Lil’s, do you want me to carry him?” He asks, jogging next to her and peering down worriedly at the kid. He really has no idea what to do with kids but he doesn’t think they’re supposed to be that flushed. How long has the kid been outside in the cold and rain? 

“I’ve got him,” she says, picking up her pace. 

They start a fire as soon as they get inside and James hurries off to see if he can find any of his old clothes. He knows his mum keeps them in the storage room somewhere. Surely they can’t be that hard to find. 

When he comes back, after an exhausting search that had ended with him banging his head against the wall as he remembered he could just call a house-elf to fetch them, he finds that Lily has stripped the kid and bundled him up in a cocoon of blankets and is sitting in front of the fire holding him. 

It seems like an eternity before Sirius returns with a frustrated looking healer. Remus is curled up in the corner of the couch anxiously watching Lily stroke the kid’s hair as James paces, feeling as if he should be doing _something_ but unsure what exactly he could possibly do. 

“If I could get some space,” the healer says briskly, kneeling next to Lily to peer at the kid. 

James jerks his head at Sirius, stepping out of the room and into the hallway, close enough that he can hear if Lily calls from him but out of the way. 

“Who the fuck leaves a kid outside like that,” he hisses, finally putting the thought into words. 

Sirius snarls, glaring at a wall and pacing the hall angrily. “I don’t know but fuck them if they think they’re getting the kid back.”

He blinks, taken aback by the seemingly off the wall statement. “Wait, back up, what?” 

Sirius stops pacing long enough to raise an incredulous eyebrow at him. “Keep up prongs, you don’t _really_ think Evan’s is just going to _give_ the kid back do you?”

No, he thinks glancing back over his shoulder at the way she still has the kid’s in her lap, no he doesn’t, but he hadn’t really considered what that implied. He feels he can be forgiven for this considering how much has happened in the last hour. “Oh fuck,” he whispers, sagging against a wall and staring wide-eyed at Sirius. “I’m going to have a kid.” 

“Can’t wait to see your parents' faces when you tell them,” Sirius snickers, leaning against the wall next to him and bumping his shoulder. 

“Shove off, this is basically your kid too now,” he mutters, glancing in the room again and raising his eyebrows at moony, who shakes his head and rises from the couch to come out in the hallway as well. 

“The healer is still running tests,” he says quietly, far quieter than either of them had been. “Nothing for sure yet but likely just a bad cold from being outside in the cold and rain for too long.” 

“Thank Merlin for that,” he sighs, moving around Remus to go back in the sitting room and crouch down next to Lily. “You good, Lil’s?” He asks quietly, running a hand down her back. 

“I’m fine,” she responds softly, still stroking the kid’s hair as if she’s afraid to stop. “Just worried about how he got out there all by himself.”

“Yeah, me too,” he agrees. 

Later, after the healer has proclaimed it nothing more than a bad cold from being outside in the cold for too long, promising to send potions along in a short while, they find a guest room near their rooms and put him to bed, making sure to leave clothes at the end of the bed where they’ll be easily seen when he wakes up. 

The four of them all stumble off to bed after exchanging another round of confused looks at the turn their night had taken, and then, with sunrise only a couple of hours away, they all tumble into their beds. 

James falls asleep nearly as soon as his head hits his pillow. He mistakenly assumes that Lily is only seconds behind.   


➳

  
His first conscious thought upon waking, the sun warm against his face, is that there is a definite lack of weight to his right. This means that either, Lily has already woken up and left him to sleep, or, he finds himself thinking resignedly, she had never come to bed at all and he’d been too tired to notice. 

He stumbles out of bed, squinting blearily at the sun that seems to be so happily shining into the room. He has absolutely no idea what time it is but judging by the, frankly horrifying amount of sunlight in the room, it must be past breakfast time. 

He stumbles out into the hallway, blinking in confusion at the sight that greets him. The previous night feels like nothing more than some strange fever dream and he can’t help but wonder if he’s still dreaming, the scene before him far too baffling to work through when he’s only just woken up. 

Sirius and Remus are both clustered around the door of the room that he dimly remembers placing the kid in last night. Remus has one hand clutching the doorframe and the other covering his mouth, presumably to stifle whatever sounds he wants to make. Sirius is in front of Remus, holding what looks like an old camera he’d nearly forgotten his parents owned, and looks to be gleefully snapping pictures of whatever is happening in the room. Although James really cannot begin to imagine what is so fascinating that Remus and Sirius both look as if they’re having the time of their lives standing in the doorway watching. 

Neither of them seems to have noticed him, or he suspects that Remus has and is just pretending that he hasn’t. Merlin knows he hasn’t been able to sneak up on Remus in years, one of the greatest tragedies of his life if he’s being honest. 

Regardless of whether Remus is or isn’t ignoring him, he creeps up behind them and peaks over Remus’ shoulder, curious as to what seems to have caught their attention. The overwhelming rush of fondness that sweeps through him seconds later nearly knocks him off of his feet and he has to put a hand against the doorframe, his head spinning. 

The kid is still asleep, curled under the duvet, the only part of him still visible is the top of his head, the dark hair standing out easily against the pale blue sheets. Lily, who must have never come to bed at all by the looks of it, is sitting in a desk chair that she’s dragged over to the side of the bed, one arm flung across the kid’s chest and the other curled under her head. 

He’s still at a loss as to why Sirius and Remus are gleefully taking pictures but he can’t deny that he’s happy there will be pictures. He’s sure that knowing these two, he’ll later regret not asking _why_ they’re taking pictures, but he’ll deal with that when it happens. 

“Both of you shove off,” he mutters, shoving Sirius’s shoulder for good measure and snickering when he nearly falls over. 

“Fine, fine. Merlin, no need to get your knickers in a twist,” Sirius mutters, shooting him a glare. “You gonna tell your parents or should I?”

He grimaces, his mum is going to be _ecstatic_ at the idea of a child in the house, but he’s not sure he wants to be the one to tell her exactly _why_ there’s a child in the house. His mum’s rage is scarier than anyone else’s. Fuck you-know-who, his mum would put the dark lord to shame if she wanted to. 

“You tell her,” he mutters, smiling weakly at Sirius’ suspicious glare. “Now shove off so I can wake Lil’s up.” He shuts the door in their faces before they can say anything else. 

He takes another moment to stare at Lily before he moves over to the bed, lightly placing a hand on her shoulder and glancing at the lump where the kid is, doing a double-take when he meets wide gray eyes peeking up at him over the edge of the covers. 

“Hullo,” he says softly, wondering if the kid even remembers how he got here. He can’t imagine he’d have liked waking up in a strange house at that age. “Do you remember last night?”

The kid stares at him silently and then darts a glance down at Lil’s, still fast asleep, before nodding his head yes. James tries to not let his worry at the silence show on his face. He really, _really_ doesn’t know a lot about kids but he doesn’t think they’re supposed to be this silent. 

“Are you hungry?” He asks and smiles slightly at the wide-eyed excitement that flashes across the kid’s face before he nods. “Okay, let me wake Lil’s up, and then we can go eat.”

Lil’s comes awake with a mumbled groan that sounds suspiciously like _‘fuck off, Potter’_ and he snorts. He’s not sure she’ll ever stop automatically saying that when half asleep and grumpy. 

“Lil’s, wake up, it’s time for breakfast,” he sings at her, peaking at the kid to see how he reacts and is happy to find nothing but curiosity in his eyes. 

“Breakfast,” she mumbles, pressing her face further into her arm, the word barely coherent. “Can’t. Gotta watch—” she breaks off with a gasp, shooting up into a sitting position and locking eyes with the kid. 

“Oh,” she breathes, pressing a hand to her chest and letting out a giant sigh. “Oh, good, good, you’re awake, thank Merlin.” 

The kid's eyes have gone terribly wide and he blinks at them silently, making no move to come out from under the covers or speak. 

Lily tenses slightly at the silence, but her voice stays light when she speaks again. “Okay, breakfast. I’m going to go change, James dear. There’s clothes right here for you to change into, love” she says softly, patting the clothes on the end of the bed and waits for the kid to nod before standing up and pressing a kiss to his cheek. 

He stands there staring blankly at the kid for a truly embarrassing amount of time after Lily leaves, unsure as to what he should do now. He’s never had to interact with a kid this young and he is at a total loss as to what to do. Eventually, after James has cast around for something, anything at all to say, the kid pokes one hand out from under the covers and makes a spinning motion with his finger before pointing imperiously at James. 

James blinks at him for a moment, brain still struggling to wake up, and then nearly smacks himself in the face when he finally gets it. “Right! Right! Sorry, sorry! I’ll just turn around while you get dressed.” 

Merlin, he’s happy that no one was in the room to see that. Sirius would _never_ let him live that down if he’d seen. 

He hums to himself as he listens to the kid shuffle around. He dearly hopes the kid starts talking soon if for no reason other than it feels strange not knowing his name. 

There’s a shuffle to his right and then the kid is moving into his field of vision, tugging awkwardly at the collar of the shirt. The clothes are a bit too big on him and James isn’t sure if that’s because he was older when he wore them or if the kid is just really that small. The kid is holding the waistband of the pants, which look as if they want to slip down despite being the right length. The shirt looks awfully stiff and uncomfortable despite how big it is on him and the kid blinks up at him with a wrinkled nose that makes it clear how he feels about this. 

“Hmm…I think I can fix the pants,” he mutters, drawing his wand and crouching down. He’d helped Remus with the charms on his old clothes more than once and he’s always had a knack for it. He’s sure he can figure this out. 

It isn’t until the pants tighten just enough to sit comfortably on the kid’s waist and he hears a shocked, indrawn gasp of air, that it occurs to him that he has no idea if this kid is a muggle or not. When looks up he finds the kid staring at his wand with wide, fascinated eyes, which by itself would not be worrying. Even wizard born children were fascinated with simple magic at that age sometimes. 

No, the worrying part was the fear that looked as if it was trying to bleed into the expression, despite the kid stubbornly trying to keep it hidden. 

“You good, kid?” He asks softly, not sure what exactly he’s supposed to do and wishing Lily would come back. 

There’s a tense moment of silence, the kid gone rigid and still, eyes unerringly locked on the wand in James’ hand. “It’s not going to hurt you,” he says soothingly, and then, a spark of an idea lighting in his mind, he holds his hand out. “Do you want to hold it?” 

The kid squints at him suspiciously but after another moment's hesitation reaches out with one terrifyingly tiny hand and takes the wand out of James’ hand. He holds it gingerly, glancing over at James every few seconds, and then when nothing awful happens, he wrinkles his nose and waves it in an, honestly not awful, imitation of the movement that James had made when fixing his pants. 

The surprising part isn’t that he mimics what he saw James do, no, James, for all that he lacks any type of experience with children, had expected that. No, the surprising part is that the kid waves the wand and the duvet starts smoking where sparks hit it. 

“Oh….” he says blankly, staring at the smoke and then turning to look at the kid who stares back with wide eyes. “This means I can teach you how to prank Padfoot,” he says after a moment, not sure of what else to say. He’s rewarded with the slightest smile ghosting over the kid’s face before he carefully hands the wand back, pointing at the smoke with a wrinkled nose and worried eyes. 

“Hmmm… yeah, I should probably do something about that,” he agrees, thankful that nothing had actually caught fire. 

A few minutes later, smoke vanished, clothes fixed and the kid hovering near his leg, he herds them both out the door, already imagining the taste of coffee on his tongue. 

“There he is!” Sirius crows happily as soon as they walk in, using his fork to point dramatically at them. He freezes in the doorway, narrowing his eyes at Sirius and wishing he could make the plate of gravy throw itself at Sirius’ face, but alas, his mother is sitting right there, and he can’t imagine she’d take kindly to that. 

“There he is!” Sirius crows again, beaming brightly at him and James feels the kid crowd a little closer to his leg, obviously unnerved by Sirius’ happiness. “The newest baby Potter and the new parent!” 

There’s a squeak from behind him and he glances over his shoulder to find Lily frozen on the bottom step, eyes wide and shocked. He shrugs at her, not sure what he’s supposed to do, especially seeing how his parents are both smirking into their tea. 

“Mum, Dad,” he greets tiredly, pulling out a chair and meeting the kid’s eyes before inclining his head at it. The kid throws another suspicious look at Sirius before scrambling into the chair. 

“And there’s the lovely mother!” Sirius exclaims when Lily steps into the room. If glares could kill Sirius would have dropped dead, possibly Remus too considering the glare Lily shoots him as he laughs into his tea. 

“Padfoot,” he groans, reaching gratefully for the coffee pot Izzy always puts on the table for him, “light of my life, my favorite brother, the other half of my blessed pranking heart—”

“Careful prongs, you’ll make Evans jealous,” Sirius laughs, blowing Lily a kiss. Lily ignores him in favor of pulling the healing potion for the kid out of her pocket and explaining what it is to the kid in a low tone. 

“Sirius,” he says sharply, glancing worriedly at the kid next to him who is still glancing at Sirius with wary eyes even as he listens to Lily. “You know I think you’re funny, but could you possibly tone it down?” He says meaningfully, widening his eyes, and inclining his head towards the kid. 

Sirius blinks at him, some of the humor in his eyes lifting as he seems to properly take in the kid for the first time. 

“Sirius told us about your late-night adventure,” his mum cuts in gently when it doesn’t seem as if Sirius is going to do anything other than stare at the kid with dark eyes. 

“Yeah,” he agrees, dumping a fourth spoonful of sugar into his coffee and watches out of the corner of his eyes as Lily serves the kid food while the kid downs the potion and grimaces. “It was pretty eventful.”

“And what is your name, young man?” His dad asks, leaning around James to look the kid in the eye. 

The kid stares back wide-eyed, fork held tightly in his hand and James has a split moment of fear where he thinks the kid is going to bolt from the table. 

“He’s not really feeling up to talking,” Remus says mildly, setting his cup down and directing a soft smile at the kid. Some of the tension visibly leaves the kid’s shoulders at the statement. “I’m sure he’ll tell us his name when he feels up to it, right kiddo?” 

The kid squints at Remus for a moment, face screwed up in thought before he gives a decisive nod and stuffs a fork full of biscuit into his mouth, effectively preventing him from verbally answering even if he had wanted to. 

His dad hums quietly, meeting his eyes and raising an eyebrow. He shrugs, he has no idea what to do, he’s just winging it as he goes along. 

“Well, he’s certainly welcome to stay with us for as long as he needs to,” his mum says, smiling knowingly at him. He sticks his tongue out at her wondering what exactly Sirius told them before he came down. Perhaps having Sirius explain wasn’t his best idea.

Just because Sirius seems to have decided that he and Lily are going to keep the kid doesn’t mean that they are. They’re far too young for a kid. For Morgana’s sake, they haven’t even been married a full six months yet! They haven’t even had a chance to talk it over yet, which he feels should be an important part of the decision. And what if the kid’s parents show up? They can’t very well keep the kid in that case, even if he does have some strongly worded opinions for whoever let the kid get lost in the middle of nowhere. 

Although… he can’t help but think that the odds of the kid getting lost in the countryside surrounding the manor are about zero to none. The most likely option for how he got out there isn’t one that he really wants to consider but is most likely the correct one. 

Regardless, the protests sound weak even in the confines of his own mind. He glances at Lily again, meeting her eyes and finding the same torn indecision reflected back at him. They’re too young but, they were also awfully young to be getting married and they’d gone right on ahead with that. Remus is smiling knowingly at him as well when he glances over the table at him, and Sirius… Well, Sirius is still staring at the kid with a heavy contemplative look in his eyes that James wishes he didn’t recognize as well as he did. 

He can’t say he doesn’t understand the look, doesn’t understand the humor that Sirius had been forcing. The kid does bear a striking resemblance to Regulus and he can’t imagine that Sirius is handling it well. Knows that Sirius prefers to pretend he doesn’t have another brother at all rather than face who it is that Regulus is likely following. 

Privately, he thinks that the reason Lily and Sirius get on so well is that they’re both stubbornly trying to ignore the fact that people they once loved are following someone who wants them dead. He can’t relate to them in this, can’t help but be thankful that he can’t relate to them in this. 

A hand tugs on his sleeve hesitantly and he glances down to find the kid staring up at him with wide, eager eyes. He makes a motion with his fork that, after a moment, James recognizes as the same motion he’d done with the wand earlier and he laughs. He hadn’t expected the kid to want to try again. 

“Not at the table,” he tells him, laughing lightly and ruffling the kid’s hair. “After breakfast, we can go outside and you can try again.”

“Try what?” Lily asks, eyeing them curiously. 

“I let him hold my wand earlier,” he says, ignoring the incredulous look she immediately shoots him, “and he made the duvet smoke! Which is impressive for a…” he trails off and eyes the kid consideringly. “How old are you, kid?”

The kid flashes five fingers at him and goes back to eating, sniffing suspiciously at the pumpkin juice in front of him. 

“That is very impressive for a five-year-old,” his mum agrees, smiling at the baffled face the kid makes when he tries the pumpkin juice. “You didn’t make anything happen with either of our wands until you were seven.”

Sirius snickers, “The baby Potter is already showing you up, prongs.”

“Of course he is,” Lily agrees quietly before he can do more than glare at Sirius. “It makes sense that any child of ours would be better than both of us. Don’t you agree, dear?” 

He finds himself inordinately happy that he isn’t holding anything as he’s sure he would have dropped it with how numb his fingers suddenly go. Lily meets his eyes evenly, the question clear in her eyes, and when he glances down he finds the kid carefully looking back and forth between them, badly concealed hope flashing in his eyes. 

“Yeah,” he agrees softly, letting himself acknowledge that there had never been any other way for this to go. “Don’t you think so, kid? You’re gonna be better than both of us aren’t you?”

The kid is staring up at them both with wide, shining eyes and is shaking with, what he hopes is, excitement. He still doesn’t speak but he points at them both excitedly and then at himself, smile so wide it’s blinding. 

“Yes, love,” Lily says gently, taking one of his hands in hers. “You can stay with us if you want to.”

The excited nodding that they get does nothing but cement the idea that whoever had the kid before this must have been truly awful if this is the reception they’re getting when they’ve done nothing so far but the bare basics of taking care of him. 

“Oh thank Merlin and Morgana,” Sirius says loudly, dramatically setting his fork down with a flourish and pointing at them. “If you two hadn’t adopted him, I was going to have to and we all know I would be an _awful_ parent.” 

“Oi,” he exclaims, darting a glance at his mum and then throwing a biscuit at Sirius anyways. “Don’t think this gets you out of helping!” 

“We’ll all help of course,” his dad says, rolling his eyes at Sirius’ outraged spluttering. 

“Perhaps after lunch Lily and I could take him shopping,” his mum says, clasping her hands together excitedly. 

Remus is frowning slightly which is what tips James off that this might not be the best idea. He knows, despite not truly understanding, he knows that Remus has a harder life than either he or Sirius. Just as he knows that Remus must be seeing pieces of himself in the way the kid refuses to speak. He glances at the kid again and finds him staring around the table at them all with wide eyes, cheeks just barely flushed and he takes a minute to think of how reserved Remus had been when James had first met him. 

“Let’s put off shopping until tomorrow,” he says, cutting off his mum’s excited rambling. “I don’t want to overwhelm the kid and his fever’s only just gone away.” He presses the back of his hand to the kid’s head just to reassure himself that this is true. Relieved when he feels nothing but cool skin, the fever having vanished as quick as it’d come.   


➳

  
Later, back against a tree, Lily sitting between his legs as they watch Sirius excitedly explain Quidditch to the, clearly skeptical, kid, he finds himself once again wondering how on earth they’re going to do this. 

“Are we sure about this?” He asks quietly, leaning his chin on Lil’s shoulder. 

“No,” she sighs, laughing ruefully and shrugging slightly. “But, I don’t think Sirius was kidding when he said he’ll do it if we don’t.” 

“Should we try to find his parents? Or find whoever it is that lost him?” 

She scoffs, “No, absolutely not. He clearly, desperately wants to stay here which tells me all I need to know about whoever had him before.” 

“Harsh, Evans,” he snickers, pressing a kiss to her neck. “Didn’t know you had it in you.” 

“Oi! Calling me Evans, is that your way of saying you want to break up?” She exclaims in mock outrage, pulling away and twisting to stare at him with large, offended eyes. 

He gasps, leaning back against the tree and pressing a hand to his heart. “Of course not Lily flower, light of my life, my better half, flower of my heart—”

“The light of my life bit really falls flat when you use it for Sirius too,” she cuts in snidely, raising an eyebrow at his open mouth. 

“I’ll have you know I love you both equally,” he states proudly, sniffing in mock offense when she raises both eyebrows at him. 

“I’m not sure that’s how this is supposed to work,” she says and laughs when he mimes dying of a broken heart. 

“What are you two arguing about over here?” Sirius cuts in, bending over James questioningly, the kid’s face appearing as well from where he’s perched on Sirius’ shoulders giggling. 

“Stop trying to steal my husband,” Lily snarks, sticking her tongue out at Sirius and winking obviously at the kid, prompting a giggle. 

Sirius gasps, stepping back and pressing one hand to his chest, the other still clasped around the kid’s ankle. “Why Evans, I would never! How dare you besmirch my honor like this and in front of the baby Potter too!”

The kid giggles again, clearly having grown more comfortable around Sirius and James hopes that’s a good sign. That whatever bullshit the kid had to put up with before will fade to nothing but a bad memory soon.   


➳

  
“You want to officially make him a Potter do you not?” His father asks later that evening when it’s just the two of them in his study. 

“We hadn’t discussed it yet,” he admits, rubbing his face and thinking that they should probably do that soon. 

His father hums quietly, considering him over his glasses, his warm brown eyes oddly serious, and James tries to not squirm. “Are you sure about this, James? You and Lily are quite young to be taking on a child. I’m sure we could find him a good family if it’s only his safety you’re worried about.”

He considers this, shoving down the impulse to automatically say no, and _actually_ considers it. He is worried about the kid’s safety, they all are he knows. Remus had gone to town earlier and there had been no word of a missing child, which seemed to imply that the kid had been purposefully dropped off in the middle of nowhere and it was only luck that he’d crossed the manor’s wards. He’d suspected as much but to have it partly confirmed left a cold stone of anger sitting in his stomach. 

“It won’t be only me and Lily taking care of him though,” he says slowly, working through his thoughts. “Sirius and Remus are going to help, maybe Peter if he has time, although we haven’t told him yet and he is busy with his mum, so we don’t expect him to! But it won’t be only us, and you heard Sirius, if we don’t, he will and that’ll be the same situation.”

“Would Sirius honestly do it if you and Lily don’t?” His father asks curiously, eyebrows creeping up. 

“He wouldn’t have said it if he didn’t mean it,” James responds dryly. “Sirius is nothing if not terrifyingly literal.”

“I just want to ensure that you know what you’re getting into,” he says, eyes crinkling fondly. “Not to sound my age, but I find it difficult to believe that you’re old enough to have a child.”

“I’ve been married for nearly half a year,” he points out. 

“Yes, that’s true but being married isn’t the same thing as raising a child together.”

“No,” he agrees, “but, I don’t know dad, it just feels right. I can’t imagine giving him away to a different family.” 

“Maybe it was fate that sent him to you then,” his dad says thoughtfully, tipping back in his chair and humming thoughtfully at the ceiling. 

He laughs incredulously, “Yeah, maybe.” 

“Well, if you’re both sure about this, then whenever you’re ready, I’ll dig up the Potter Family Bonding spell so that you can adopt him properly.”

He hums, considering this, considers the kid and the quiet, wary way he still watches them more often than not. “Not yet,” he says, reminding himself to talk with Lily about it but feeling sure she’ll agree. “I want him to be comfortable here before we spring that on him. I think he can talk, he’s just not comfortable enough yet and I want him to be completely comfortable first.”

“A wise decision,” his father agrees, smiling proudly at him. “A wise decision indeed.”  


➳

  
A week turns into two weeks and the kid slips into the daily routine of their lives as if he was always meant to be there. He opens up slowly, the hollowness of his cheeks become less pronounced the more he eats, and slowly, the wary eyes that he watches them with appear less and less. 

He watches James and Sirius argue quidditch in fascination, curls up in the armchair with Remus, and listens as he reads out-loud, watches Lily and Sirius with wide eyes as they argue about their charms projects that they’re working on. He follows Euphemia around the house as she flits between various hobbies, seemingly content to watch in fascination and help whenever she hands him something to help with. He sits quietly in Fleamont’s office with him and draws as Fleamont works. 

He slips into their life so easily that it makes James wonder if there isn’t something to his dad’s words. If maybe he was sent to them by fate or some higher power that they’d somehow pleased.

By the end of the first month the kid laughs quicker, laughs louder, is quick to run to Lily when she holds her arms out for a hug, and beams in delight when Sirius swings him around the room. He scrambles into James’ lap at the table without a care in the world and crawls his way into the bed with him and Lily more nights than not, an act that never fails to leave his chest feeling as if it will explode from the amount of love he feels for this small child that appeared without warning in his life. 

The moment that they’ve all been waiting for with bated breath, hearts on tenterhooks as they wait for this child to trust them enough to speak comes one month and two days after he’s arrived in their life. 

Remus is curled up in the corner of the couch, still exhausted from the full moon two days earlier, the kid is curled in his lap, having been clinging closer to Remus ever since he came back from the full moon looking exhausted and sick. Sirius is sprawled on the couch next to them, feet tucked under the blanket that Remus is using. 

He’s curled in the armchair with Lily, absently listening to her bicker with Sirius as he drinks a cup of tea and revels in the comfort of having them all near. He wishes Peter could join them more, but they’ve only seen Peter once this month at an order meeting and he’d been in such a rush to get back to his mum afterward that they hadn’t gotten a chance to tell him about the kid at all. 

He’s determined though to make Pete take a break this month and come over for dinner, surely his mum would be fine for a couple of hours. 

“When are you going to tell us your name baby Potter,” Sirius whines tiredly, poking at the kid’s leg with his foot and smiling when he giggles and pushes the foot away with a wrinkled nose. “I suppose I could call you baby Potter forever, but eventually I’ll have to start calling you teen Potter and that really just doesn’t have the same ring to it.” 

Sirius’ eyes slip close half-way through the sentence and so he misses the kid eyeing them all as seriously as a five-year-old can eye someone. Lily’s hand tightens around his and he holds his breath, wondering if maybe, maybe this is it. 

“It’s Tom,” the kid says quietly, leaning farther into Remus’ chest and smiling shyly as Sirius’ eyes snap open. “My name is Tom Riddle.”   


➳

  


**Author's Note:**

> The healer that was rudely dragged from St. Mungo's by one panicked 18-year-old Sirius Black: /Why the fuck is this teen so panicked???/
> 
> The healer upon finding three more 18-year-old's also in various states of panic because the child with them has _a cold_ : /I don't get paid enough for this./


End file.
